Month: April 2006

Review of a Review

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Harvey Mansfield’s Manliness is reviewed by Christina Hoff Summers in the Weekly Standard. His discussion with Naomi Wolf on last week’s C-Span left me irritated. I assumed the book was not as flimsy as her accusations & his defenses implied. And, indeed, Summers’ grasp is more sure:

But one forgives Mansfield his imprecision and hyperbole because so much of what he says is profoundly true. Not all of contemporary feminism is a playing out of Nietzschean themes, but a great deal of it is. He is also right when he points out that many feminist leaders emulate some of the cruder and unappealing qualities of manliness.

. . .

Mansfield’s analysis of women’s nihilism gives us the lens to understand these developments as caricatures of the feminist will to “empowerment.” It is a form of manly assertiveness unmoderated by Aristotelian ideals. Here we have an example of women imitating masculinity in its lower range. It is the dark side of the “gender neutral society” in which we now live.

(Probably more about this in the summer, but for now, Summers’ summary might interest our readers.)

Green and Gold…

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…does not necessarily mean the Green Bay Packers. I previously wrote about how some millionaires with million-dollar water views were using the language and the tactics of the environmental movement to stop (wait for it…) a clean energy project. Windmills off Cape Code, to be specific, set up in the Nantucket Shoals.

Now their fund-raising manual has been leaked to the Boston Globe. Unfortunately, the text of their manual is not available online, but the excerpts are very funny. If you want a reliable guide to shmoozing people with fat wallets and heads, you owe it to yourself to look. Some highlights:

  • Gifts of $5,000 are considered “tokens”; fundraisers are instructed to regard $250,000 as the minimum.
  • 94% of the group’s funds came from donations of $20,000 or more. If that’s grass roots, the grass is pretty darn tall.
  • The driving force and source of funding is Bill Koch, investor, sportsman, and bon vivant. He does not want his view spoiled, and neither do his neighbors.

You have already heard about NIMBYs. How about BANANAs: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.